Sunday September 7th (& every Sunday during football season), 9am-11am: Beer Breakfast
It’s football season, so it’s time for breakfast at TRH every Sunday from 9am-11am. It will be our special breakfast menu from our anniversary, with a few changes:

Monday September 8th (and every Monday evening during football season), 5pm-close or when we run out): The TRH BIG BOLOGNA SLAMWICH
We had our butcher make up some all-beef shoulder bologna (no filler) for this. It’s a 1/4lb slice of grilled bologna on Texas Toast topped with TRH Gold bbq sauce, grilled onions, American cheese, dill pickles, & cole slaw. Ridiculously good.

Thursday September 11th: Tieton Cider Works Night:At 5pm we tap Wild Washington Apple Cider, Cherry Blend Cider, Apricot Cider, and Yakima Valley Dry Hopped Cider…and a special blend of apple cider with ginger beer. Also check out the Tieton Cider infused sausage our butcher is making up fresh for this night…

There is one more surprise rearing it’s head this month, but we’ll keep it under wraps for a bit longer. STAY TUNED…

ALSO: Apologies for the back parking lot being tore to hell. It was being repaved, due to be finished today, but the crew back there ran into some snags, so we are unsure of when it will be back open. When it is, it will have a van-accessible disabled parking space/loading zone. Sorry for the hassle!

This Thursday, we are hosting Reunion 2014 Fundraiser: Collaboration for a Cause Benefit for Myeloma & Bone Cancer Research, with our pals from Schmaltz Brewing.

Reunion Ale is a yearly collaboration brewing project to benefit the Institute for Myeloma and Bone Cancer Research. It is collaboratively brewed by Schmaltz Brewing (NY) and Terrapin Brewing (GA), and changes yearly. For this event, we will be tapping a few treats:

We will be donating $1 from every pour of Reunion Ale to IMBCR, as well as raffling off a 3L Magnum bottle of 2014 Reunion Ale ($100 value), with 100% of the proceeds going to them as well.

Join Shmaltz Brewing Company, Alan Shapiro from SBS Imports (one of the creators of the Reunion project), and us at The Red Hot as we work to raise funds and awareness for the Institute for Myeloma and Bone Cancer Research. Kegs are tapping at 5pm, and a 5 glass flight will be available to those who want to try all these delicious beers. THANKS FOR HELPING!

If you haven’t heard, we are slightly expanding. We are currently renovating the space next door to our current space. Here are some answers to our most frequently asked questions:

How much bigger will TRH be?
Right now we are in 1052 sq ft. We are moving to 3000 sq ft. 360 of those square feet will be storage. 355 of those feet will be cold storage. 300 of those feet will be for kitchen & mechanical. That leaves about 1985 square feet for the bathrooms and bar room. The idea behind the new space was to make it more comfortable for our patrons, to provide some more elbow room, and to create more seating space. We are raising our capacity from 49 to 75. We never wanted to be a big unfeeling mega-bar with seating for hundreds, and are trying to make the new space feel familiar to our pals.

What will the new TRH look like?
You will see a lot of the same colors, design elements, and finishes in our new space as you do now. We are also adding new elements that we’ve always wanted, but could not do for lack of physical space.

So you’re just going to knock down a wall?
No. We will be leaving our old space entirely.

Are you going to allow kids?
No. We are a 21+ Tavern.

Are you getting more handles?
Yes. We will go from 15 to 25-ish. We could go more, but for us, that number seems just right to keep different beers fresh, and to increase our selection. Look for a House IPA handle, more dedicated Belgian style handles, a second dedicated cider handle, and some cool surprises. Look for more style-specific glassware as well.

Are you expanding the bottle list?
Yes. We are literally bursting at the seams with cellared bottles, and will offer some very cool bottle flights. We’ll post a preview bottle list before we open up the new space.

Are you going to have hard alcohol?
No.

Are you expanding the food menu?
Yes. Slightly. We’re still serving up what we know best, but are adding some new sides, bringing back some old favorites, and adding some cool new things. Some of our cooking methods will be different. Some the same. No, we are not putting in a fryer. We’ll post a preview food menu before we open up the new space.

When will the new space be open?
Right now…the best we can say is May sometime. We incurred many delays during the permitting process, and had to upgrade the building before we could start on our space. We are working as fast as we can…and apologies for the noise/mess.

Will you have pinball?
No. We will have more board games, and will be working with our neighbors at Tacoma Games to build a larger game library.

Are you hiring?
We currently have most shifts filled, but people are always welcome to drop off resumes at the bar.

After a few year hiatus, The Shelton Brothers are bringing their portfolio of delicious beers back to our market. Beers carried by Shelton Brothers generally must meet certain criteria:

•Brewed in small batches using traditional methods
•Unsweetened
•Unpasteurized
•Unfiltered / Bottle-conditioned
•Little to no use of spices or adjuncts
•Slow-fermented
•Distinctive house yeast or yeasts
•Dry as opposed to sweet

We’ll have some amazing selections available Wednesday night.
Here’s the draft list:

Today is our 6th Anniversary. On August 16th of 2007, we opened our doors to Tacoma and beyond.

THE SPACE WHEN WE GOT IT

BAR BEGINNINGS

THE ORIGINAL BAR LAYOUT. THIS IS BEFORE OUR ‘EXPANSION’ FROM 955 SQ FT TO A WHOPPING 1003 SQ FT!!!

ORIGINAL BACK BAR

On August 17th of 2013, we will celebrate this milestone with all of our pals who helped us get here. Huge tent, great beers, and familiar faces make our anniversary party a staff and regular favorite.

We’ll have our full menu available all day. Due to the huge influx of extra people for these outdoor events, we usually put on a special limited menu. This party, we’re doing the full menu, because this will be the last outdoor party we do with our current kitchen space.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
What?
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
For the past few months, we have been working with our landlords, in conjunction with our neighbors at The Wedding Bell, and in less than 6 months, we will be moving this whole shebang next door to a larger space with a initial target date of February 1 to reopen the new TRH.

We think we’ve found the perfect space to add a few extra seats, add some extra ‘breathing room’ between tables, add some new handles, upgrade the kitchen, adding a few amenities, all without creating a huge cavernous space that we feel is not what TRH is about.

We’ll keep you updated as we go, as always. Thanks to all of you for helping us make TRH what it is!

Tonight at 6pm, we will tap the first kegs from Almanac Brewing Co. in our area. This small-batch brewery has been turning heads with their “farm-to-bottle” beers geared toward the dinner table and commitment to small batch brewing. Here’s the line-up:

As June sets upon us, we bid farewell to yet another Bike Month here in Pierce County. Every year, with the help of our pals, we set out to unleash some sort of zaniness for a Bike Month event. This year was no different.

This map is a simplified map of bike-friendly routes around town, with the locations of all the current breweries, as well as the Tacoma bike shops to help you on your way. It is printed on Rite In The Rain paper, so beer spills/rain/sweat need not ruin your copy. We even stress tested a copy at the release party for 2 hours in the rain, and then vigorous use as a coaster, with astonishing results in it’s durability.

I’m writing this on the 16th, which is the true 5-year birthday of TRH. 5 Years ago right now, I was starting the 15th hour of our opening day. It was hot as hell, and I was freaking out that we were 20 people over our capacity. 7 people (2 of whom were nearby business owners) had told me that day that TRH would never make it, much less stay open 6 months. My goal was to keep the doors open for at least 5 years. I’m not sure the definition of making it, but I do know we have achieved our first long-ish term goal.

We are truly humbled by the support of our community, and the best regs in town. Thanks to all our pals, and the new pals we make daily. We are thankful to all of you, our employees, and to our amazing city.

This Saturday, we’re going to celebrate! We recently teamed up with our neighbors across the street at E-9 Brewery to make an anniversary beer, a session IPA, to celebrate The Red Hot’s 5th Anniversary. The idea that we started with was to make a session IPA (dubbed Nickel IPA) that not only came in at 5.5% ABV, but we also wanted to make five additional versions of that beer:

These 5 beers will be on tap Saturday August 18th, 2012 in our last outdoor beer garden/parking lot party of the year for the TRH 5th Anniversary. If you like it, we’ll have 5-gallon homebrew recipes for TRH Nickel Session IPA on hand for our homebrewers to take home, courtesy Shane Johns, head brewer at E9. Click on the pic to just print your own:

Here at TRH, we’re about to celebrate 5 years of being open. To help us in this celebration, we collaborated with our pals across the street at E-9 Brewery to come up with a anniversary beer. In celebration of 5 years, we dubbed it the Nickel IPA, brewed it as a low ABV session IPA (5%, natch), and will be serving up 5 different versions of it: Nickel IPA, Golden Nickel IPA (infused w/Puyallup golden berries), Green Nickel IPA (double dry-hopped), Wooden Nickel IPA (oaked), and Real Nickel IPA (cask conditioned). All versions will be on tap in our final outdoor beer garden of the year next Saturday, August 18th. Thanks to Shane and Sean at E-9 for letting us get in the way to help brew this delicious beer!

RECENT POSTS

There are quite a few things coming up here at TRH, and this will help you navigate it all: Thursday September 4th-14th: Bad Apple Cider Fest Our love of stamp cards cannot be denied. Running parallel with Washington Cider Week, we are holding our own celebration of cider. We’ll be running 5 full-time handles of […]

This Thursday, we are hosting Reunion 2014 Fundraiser: Collaboration for a Cause Benefit for Myeloma & Bone Cancer Research, with our pals from Schmaltz Brewing. Reunion Ale is a yearly collaboration brewing project to benefit the Institute for Myeloma and Bone Cancer Research. It is collaboratively brewed by Schmaltz Brewing (NY) and Terrapin Brewing (GA), […]

If you haven’t heard, we are slightly expanding. We are currently renovating the space next door to our current space. Here are some answers to our most frequently asked questions: How much bigger will TRH be? Right now we are in 1052 sq ft. We are moving to 3000 sq ft. 360 of those square […]

After a few year hiatus, The Shelton Brothers are bringing their portfolio of delicious beers back to our market. Beers carried by Shelton Brothers generally must meet certain criteria: •Brewed in small batches using traditional methods •Unsweetened •Unpasteurized •Unfiltered / Bottle-conditioned •Little to no use of spices or adjuncts •Slow-fermented •Distinctive house yeast or yeasts […]